


The Myth of True Love's Singularity

by glittrcrittr



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Byleth Broke the Time Vortex So Everyone Lives, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Families of Choice, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Other, Romance, Saints Return AU, Slow Burn, Trans Caspar von Bergliez, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Trans Hilda Valentine Goneril, What If I Just Rewrote the Entire Game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittrcrittr/pseuds/glittrcrittr
Summary: "I had to break her heart. It was the only way," the stranger on the Throne said, shaking her head. "I've tried everything else."Seiros broke the world. A new Goddess has tasked Cethleann with putting it back together.
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Dedue Molinaro, Dorothea Arnault/Edelgard von Hresvelg, Edelgard von Hresvelg/Hubert von Vestra, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Ferdinand von Aegir/Dorothea Arnault, Ferdinand von Aegir/Dorothea Arnault/Edelgard von Hresvelg/Hubert von Vestra, Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra, Flayn/Claude von Riegan, Flayn/Claude von Riegan/Linhardt von Hevring, Flayn/Linhardt von Hevring, Linhardt von Hevring/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	1. Three Houses

There was a woman seated on the Throne of Knowledge, but Cethleann did not recognize her. This cast confusion where familiar imagery had once brought comfort. Seiros had allowed Cethleann to follow her down into the Holy Tomb only once before Nemesis had stolen so much from them, but she could never forget the sight of Divine Sothis curled up on her Throne, terrible as time and fragile as a sugar thimble. She could not forget the Progenitor's face, even in her dreams.

The stranger on the Goddess's Throne should have filled Cethleann with dread, but she looked so comfortable there. The woman's posture was lax, weary; she sat because she needed a moment's rest, not because she had to fill the space post-conquest. Cethleann wanted to believe that she gave the question of whether or not she should trust this vision more than a moment's thought, but her pale green hair marked her as a child of the Goddess, and her eyes were a cool comfort. In them, she saw the unerring stubbornness of new growth.

"I had to break her heart. It was the only way," the stranger on the Throne said, shaking her head. "I've tried everything else."

"I'm sure she will forgive you," Cethleann said, as though she had any idea what the woman was talking about. She simply liked forgiveness, in concept. It was a difficult thing in practice, but she'd seen it serve as a balm for the very young and very old.

"She won't," she said. "She won't forgive any of us, but I guess that's her choice. Mortal lives are just too small for her to appreciate, but  _ you  _ do. I know I am leaving you with a monumental task, but you're the only one who can save them."

Stepping closer, Cethleann gasped. What she had first mistaken to be regalia similar to Sothis's jewelry was, in fact, chains. The loops were finely and artistically wrought, but there was no mistaking their purpose. The woman was secured to the Throne.

"Do  _ you  _ need help?"

"Oh, no, I did this," she said, lifting one hand. The trailing manacle chimed musically. "We weren't in agreement about this plan, but it is as I said—I've tried everything else."

"I am not—I am afraid I am not very good at helping. I try, but I am not strong."

"Tell me: Why did your uncle, the Lord of the Desert, leave?"

Cethleann felt the tips of her ears heat, scalded by embarrassment. She couldn't imagine how the stranger knew.

"Uncle became frustrated with the war effort," Cethleann said, carefully stepping around pertinent facts.

"With you, specifically. Because you kept giving injured humans your blood. You gave until it nearly killed you. Until you had no choice but to go to sleep to recover."

"I behaved recklessly," she admitted, her voice thin.

The stranger's expression softened. Her lips tried to find a smile, but wobbled precariously instead.

"Your reckless compassion is why it has to be you. So please, wake up. Go to Garreg Mach and help them." The woman's tears spilled over, but she was too restrained to wipe them away. "My students are worth it, I promise."

•

Cethleann woke at first light, of course. Her father would not have thought she'd be awake, as it'd been decades since she'd so much as rolled over in her sleep, so his bedchamber was dark and quiet. He didn't stir, not even when she powered up the lift that joined the bunker with the unassuming cottage that served as the secret entrance to their home. Cethleann thought about leaving her father a thorough note, but she did not know how to explain herself. To say that she'd been visited by a Goddess, but not their own, would only give him undue worry. Though he had no doubt care-worn himself into slumber watching over her, she did not believe his sleep could be anything but shallow. Choosing not to tarry over her words, she wrote, _ Feeling lovely. I am off to see the market, _ and hoped his heart didn't seize entirely when he found the note where her head had lain.

True to her word, Cethleann went to the market. It was quite the walk, but she was nothing if not well-rested. The journey gave her time to see what was new, remember what had been, and to think about what still needed to be. Much had changed, but she was going to count that as a positive thing. Change was one of the traits she admired most in humanity. Her people moved with glacial difficulty, while humans were effervescent top notes and shooting stars, lives like laughter fading all too quickly.

Some of the villages Cethleann remembered with fondness had disappeared, while others had swelled from hamlets to spire-crowned greatness. Garreg Mach had changed little by comparison. The kaleidoscope of fashions and dialects in the crowd were new, but she let it all wash over her like a piece of music she hadn't heard before. If she was brave, it could be a lovely experience.

When the merchant running the dry goods stall greeted her, Cethleann managed to return her smile.

"Might you have ribbons? Long ones, if you would be so kind."

"What color, darling?"

"Red and white, please."

Red, white, and sea-blue: The fantastic scintillation of the Star before she fell, magnificent against the horizon. Cethleann had never witnessed the Goddess in her true form, but she remembered Seiros telling her the stories as she braided back her long, curling hair.

Cethleann gathered her hair back from her face, from her ears, and the merchant gasped to see her truth.

Her father was going to be  _ very  _ angry.

•  
_  
Great Tree Moon, Imperial Year 1180  
  
_•

Saint Cichol had been very clear that the house leaders were not to return to Garreg Mach until they had come to an agreement on their mock debates, so Claude was hunkering down to spend the rest of his life camping out in the monastery's woods. He'd attended several of the Alliance's roundtable discussions at Judith's insistence, but he knew a losing battle when he saw it. He couldn't get a word in edgewise, and the arguments had devolved to the point that the Imperial princess and crown prince were either ignoring or flat-out not hearing the running commentary he muttered under his breath. Dimitri believed in fairness, and Edelgard didn't seem to believe fairness existed. Claude wanted to believe that they could make this happen before the rainy season began in earnest, but he wasn't going to hold out hope for Their Highnesses's ability to agree on any discrete subject. It wasn't going well, even before the bandits congealed from the shadows.

The moment they appeared, Claude looked to the prince and princess. In Dimitri's eyes, he saw shock. Fair. Bandits did that to a man. But in the future Emperor's eyes, he only saw determination. It was too much, too quick. It wasn't this skirmish that she was braced for. More often than not, bandits were half-starved farmers, clumsily armed with weapons of convenience. Nobody from Garreg Mach dug that deep into personal reserves when faced with bandits. This was entry-level stuff. Edelgard wasn't as good an actor as she thought.

And so, Claude kicked over the brazier and beat a tactical retreat. He saw no shame in running. It'd been Nader's very first lesson: A live man fights another day, while a dead man merely rots in the sun. This truth had carried Claude from his first four kidnappings, and the King was proud that he'd never been forced to muster a ransom on his behalf.

The situation with Their Highnesses was an interesting one, sure, but he didn't need to watch it unfold. The postmortem would suffice, be it literal or figurative.

Unfortunately, they gave chase. They had no hope of overtaking him—Claude had perfected swift escape on moonless sand, and Fódlan's firm turf translated to pure speed—but they kept pace better than one would expect from a pair of spoilt monarchlings. This was a problem, because it gave their enemies a single target to pursue.

"Claude, you mustn't try to draw their fire yourself!" Dimitri shouted, giving the whizzing arrows something to aim at in the gathering dark.

Claude rolled his eyes. Heroics had been the last thing on his mind. Now they shared the pleasure of getting shot at together. What a neat training exercise this was turning out to be.

"We must stand and fight them!" Edelgard said, which further cemented that running would have been the correct call, if Dimitri hadn't expected the best from him.

"With the worst weapons in the armory?" Claude said, gesturing with the bow he'd grabbed. They'd armed only out of formality, so they hadn't taken any gear that could have been used by a working knight or hunter instead. His bow had to be older than him. Dimitri could brute strength any weapon into lethality, no matter its dullness, but Claude didn't like his own odds—and weren't those the odds that mattered, really?

"Allow me to hold them off. I do not fear unequal numbers," Dimitri said. Claude shook his head. He didn't know what game Edelgard was playing, but he was in no mood to give her what she wanted.

"There's a notch valley up ahead. I'll take the high ground vantage; you two keep them off me. The terrain will funnel them up to us in a tight column."

"A sound plan."

Edelgard wasn't able to keep all of the disappointment out of her voice. Claude grinned.

"Don't you worry that beautiful head of yours, princess. I'll get us out of this in one piece."

It was lucky that Claude knew his way around the forest, but that was luck he'd made through good habits. He'd grown up in an arid land, so trees made him kind of nervous. He couldn't see the horizon line in Garreg Mach, and at first that had been suffocating. He'd made a habit of sneaking out of the monastery early in the morning, to explore the surrounding area and catalogue its unique flora. The notch valley was a snug break in the rocky pass, gnawed into the landscape by a small but determined river over incalculable years. The soil running along the valley bed was moist and loose, which happened to be the ideal grow environment for a plant that looked like a wild carrot, but didn't taste anywhere near as sweet. Claude had yet to experiment with it, but he had faith that life would present him with an opportunity sooner or later.

Claude scrambled up the incline, feeling winded. Distance runs had never been his forte, especially not in a forest as dense as this one. The trees were packed in, the ground between the trunks matted with vines and creepers. From the top, he could see the line of the bandits's torches snaking up behind them. Claude readied his bow, and thanked them for the extra light. The prince and princess hadn't grabbed anything but their weapons when their camp had been overrun, so anyone with a torch was officially unfriendly. Claude aimed accordingly.

Edelgard and Dimitri fought their way through foe and foliage to get near his position. His quiver having been diminished to a mere two arrows, Claude was happy to see them.

"How many more of them do you think there are?" Claude asked. "Hypothetically, like this is a fun mental exercise and our lives don't depend on your answer."

"Two men, perhaps three," Edelgard said, brushing a damp curl of hair from the curve of her sweaty cheek. She did this with a flick of her chin, since her gloved hands were stained red. "Nothing we can't handle."

"Sure, but they've got friends on the wing," Claude said, pointing out the pinpricks of more torches in the distance with the less-dull end of one arrow.

"Ah. Well. That is…less than ideal."

Claude gave Dimitri a look. The crown prince was strong as an ox, but other than that, he lacked many of the finer qualities needed in a king. He was lucky he was going to get the job from his old man either way, because his battlefield eloquence left a lot to be desired.

"You brats!" The bandit could have leveraged a sneak attack, but he'd been too angry. He charged at Edelgard, screaming, his axe raised.

This, unlike any other moment that night, surprised the Adrestrian princess. As the bandit's blade came for her, the edge splitting weak moonlight in a wide arc, she froze.

Claude fired an arrow; it struck true, bristling from the side of the man's neck, but it was too late.

"El, no!"

Dimitri had already gotten in the way.

•

"It frustrates me how you pretend you see no benefit from my sitting in on classes," Cethleann told her father as they took their meal. There were precious few opportunities for the two of them to talk frankly, so she had to settle for splitting his attention with his food and his work. For this conversation, though, she suspected that his distraction could work to her favor. He talked often of a tactician's true merit laid in their ability to control when and where a battle happened, and she knew better than to think she could outwit him should he apply his full attention to the argument.

"As frustrated as I am by having to repeat myself like this," the Archbishop said, wearily. 

"Only  _ half  _ so frustrated, I promise," Cethleann grumbled, stabbing her fruit with far more force than it deserved. 

Cichol sighed, dipping his pen to refresh the ink. Though he was forever laboring over paperwork, the piles never diminished. His progress as the head of the rebuilt Central Church was illustrated best by his stacks of snapped quills.

"It is not that I fail to see any gains, but that none could balance the potential of your loss."

Cethleann sighed as well. He didn't need to say her mother's name to summon the shape of her. She understood his reasoning, but she simply couldn't accept it quietly. She had not brought the both of them to Garreg Mach only to be kept away from the students. 

"Father, I know you appreciate the importance of education. You would not have reorganized the Academy's structure if you did not believe in quality instruction, so—"

"You already know more than these children will learn in their lifetimes," Cichol said, gesturing with his quill. The nib spat ink, and she rather unkindly hoped he didn't notice the fat black droplets on his robe until after he'd taught his afternoon classes with the nobles. They'd make much of it.

"It is  _ them  _ I wish to learn from!" Cethleann said, exasperated. 

Her father goggled at her. "Then I  _ truly _ fail to see the benefit."

The urge to cry itched at her nose, but she ignored it. Tears would only work against her here.

"I have felt unmoored for so long. You are surprised I would desire friendship?"

"Cethleann. They will never see you as one of them. I don't say that to be cruel. Seiros has built a grand façade in our stead, and there is no way for the students to see you behind it. I am sorry." Her father tried a smile. "But you have me, at least."

"And I am grateful." There was a single Noa fruit left on her plate, painstakingly split and cut to resemble a flower. Cethleann could not force herself to pick it up and eat it. Her appetite had left her, but admitting as much to her father would trigger yet another discussion of how she was processing her guilt. He could not absolve her of all the deaths she'd slept through, and she wished he'd stop trying. "If you'll excuse me?"

She left her annoyance in their personal chambers. Even if she hadn't deliberately tried to shake off her frustration with her father, it was impossible for her to feel anything but joy when stepping out into the sunshine. She was a creature of light, and Saint Cichol had designed Garreg Mach to prioritize the sun. The monastery would have felt like home even if she didn't see the hallmarks of his handiwork in every angle of the architecture. The stonework rose with the earth, settled firmly in its grasp despite the thousand years since its construction began. So many of the great castles in Fódlan were shaped by war, wedged into fortuitous positions without half a moment's thought given to what the view would look like from the walkways. Garreg Mach was beautiful, a prayer for peace and community made manifest. Her father had been furious when he'd found her there after her unexplained awakening, but it hadn't lasted long. He, too, loved this place. How could he have spent so much time on the designs and not hoped to someday see it thrive with his own eyes? She only wished she knew how to reassure him that she was safe inside its walls. He was made to slumber beneath the earth, but she couldn't do it anymore. 

Cethleann could tell that though the people in the courtyard were watching her, they didn't wish their curiosity to be noticed. She was weary of seeing nothing but the tops of bowed heads and dutifully downturned gazes, but to ask them to treat her as a fellow denizen of Garreg Mach would not be well-received. As much as she wished it were otherwise, she privately feared that her father was right. 

Still, she had the sun, and the fresh air, and the sounds of people living around her. Cethleann tried not to look at anyone, too, as that might have been what they expected from a Saint. Seiros had left neither explanation nor instructions when she'd disappeared into the wilds, so they were pretending at loftiness and hoping for the best. Garreg Mach seemed content enough with them, at least. Perhaps, she thought, instead of feeling mournful for the opportunities at friendship she did not have, she could focus her energy on being the kind of person they thought she was. The Saint Cethleann she'd seen reflected in the illuminated texts and generous statuary seemed lovely, and it was a worthy enough goal. She could find a kind of happiness in that. 

"Ow."

Cethleann was concentrating so hard on not seeing anyone, she managed to succeed in excess. There was a boy on the dock, stretched out and sound asleep, and she didn't realize it until she'd kicked him in the ribs. He stared up at her, faintly puzzled. 

Linhardt's eyes were the precise color of depth. They were the blackest possible blue, as limitless as the heart of the ocean, held so far beyond the reach of the sun's rays. Cethleann felt like she was falling, and then, suddenly, she was.

She didn't fall far, but it was such an uncommon sensation for her that it felt like plummeting. The water welcomed her, daughter of the great Sea Dragon, and she sank. Cethleann had to fight the urge to change, unfurling her grand wholeness to catch the cool light filtering from the surface, since there were witnesses. She couldn't indulge herself as she'd done when she and her father had been alone on the coast, and for the first time since coming to Garreg Mach she regretted that fact. She didn't mind the compromises she made to walk alongside the humans, and truly hadn't missed it overmuch. It was no real surprise that the water made her yearn for her wings. She'd always been this way.

No sooner had she relaxed into the embrace of the pond, a strong arm hooked around her, dragging her to them and the surface with crushing force. They were a powerful swimmer, all but throwing her bodily onto the dock. Cethleann coughed, pawing back the suffocating curtain of her wet hair. Her savior, Raphael, clapped her on the back. 

"Saint Cethleann, I—I must apologize," Linhardt sputtered, his face stricken to ghastliness. "It was careless of me to fall asleep in such an inconvenient location. You could have been injured—"

Cethleann laughed. She did not like to interrupt, but he looked like he might be sick if he had to continue wallowing in his mistake. Taking the young man's hand, she gave it a quick squeeze, damp but reassuring.

"Oh, but I love to swim! Perhaps I could have been more appropriately attired for a dip, but I am quite alright. The breeze off the water is incomparable for midmorning naps, is it not?"

"Yes," Linhardt said, though he looked like he wasn't sure if he was allowed to agree. "I didn't intend to sleep, but it was so nice…"

"I understand completely. I prefer the salt air of the sea myself, but this pond has charms all her own. I am sorry I was not paying attention to where I was walking. You could have been hurt just as easily."

"Don't apologize, please," Linhardt protested, going red. "I am—"

_ "YOUR GRACE!" _ Lorenz's gasp somehow managed to echo across the courtyard. This got the attention of several other students, who'd all missed the comparatively small commotion of Cethleann's tumble and Raphael's save. As they converged to investigate, she became acutely aware of her sodden clothing. When Lorenz whipped off his jacket and offered it to her with practiced chivalry, she took it gratefully.

"I am fine, thank you," Cethleann said, though she knew better than to think she could head off anyone's worry. They thought her delicate, and telling them anything to the contrary would put them in danger. "As I was just telling Linhardt, I am a confident swimmer. I would not have been in any danger, even if Raphael had not helped. Though I appreciate his bravery, of course! Any lord will be lucky to have your quick reflexes in their employ."

Raphael laughed, pleased with the compliment.

"Not a problem, Your Gracefulness! Even though you are way heavier than you look."

" _ Sir! _ " Lorenz screeched. "I will not stand idly by and allow you to deface a woman as perfectly proportioned as Saint Cethleann, whose very countenance—"

"Really, I am sure he simply speaks the truth. The volume of my hair and clothes lend themselves to weight when wet," Cethleann said, forced to interrupt again. "Speaking of which, I must go change into something dry. I insist you do the same, Raphael. I would feel just terrible should your heroism be repaid with a cold."

"I'll go get some training done. That'll get me dry real quick!" Raphael said. Cethleann was unsure of the logic, but he seemed convinced.

"I thank you again. And you, Lorenz. I shall ensure your jacket is laundered and returned to you. Goodbye!"

She held the jacket tightly around her shoulders, hurrying to her personal chambers. This bit of gossip would spread quickly, no doubt, but she didn't need the Archbishop to see her bedraggled self with his own eyes.

•

Despite the magic and his Goddess's mercy, Prince Dimitri's body was an unhappy archive of violence. Dedue tried not to let his eyes linger, but the acreage of his back was knotted with scar tissue. Dimitri's skin illustrated the suffering he'd endured, and Dedue would not look away out of respect. More so than any king or lord he'd known, the prince bore the troubles of his people bodily. Mercedes's tiny, soft hands made his back look all the more gruesome by comparison. Stretched out on his stomach and stripped to the waist, he seemed smaller than he should've been. A man as great as him should not have been made to look so vulnerable. It made Dedue’s chest, his heart, terribly heavy. 

"He will recover?" Dedue asked. It wasn't that he doubted Dimitri's ability to heal, but that he himself needed some reassurance. When the knights had returned with the house leaders, the story of the ambush had spread quickly. Dedue did not know most of the details, and for the time being they did not matter. Until Dimitri was well again, all else could wait. His world stopped with his liege, and he would not breathe easily until he woke up.

"Of course," Mercedes said, with an extra indulgent smile. Not many would spare that kindness to a man of Duscur, and he appreciated it deeply. He’d been relieved when, after completing the tiring work of knitting together the deepest part of the wound, Manuela had allowed Mercedes to take her place at Dimitri’s bedside. Manuela was a fine enough woman, but he knew she would've asked him to leave her to her work. He simply could not do that. "His hip joint caught the brunt of it. It will affect his gait for a few weeks while the bone repairs, but he'll be back to his old self sooner than you'd think. We're very lucky the bandit missed anything truly important." 

"And I should thank the Goddess for this, yes?" It was a sincere question on his part. The idea that one goddess was responsible for every care and ill possible in Fódlan was strange to him; he couldn't help but think she must be overburdened by the vast needs of her people. He worried, perhaps unnecessarily, that his prayer might be lost amid everything else jockeying for her attention. 

"Oh, I could join you in prayer if you'd like!" Mercedes said, brightly. "There's a lovely hymn I could teach you." 

"I… I am grateful for the offer. I will stay here, though. With His Highness." 

Mercedes stroked back Dimitri's sweaty hair with a sigh. "Sir Jeralt will come looking for you if you don't go to class." 

"I question the wisdom of my placement among the knights. Had I been allowed to stay with His Highness…"

Dedue hadn't complained aloud before, not even to Prince Dimitri. Traditionally, the Officers Academy was split by houses, each student placed in the class corresponding to their homeland, but Saint Cichol had changed things after his reappearance. In his Academy, he personally taught the nobles in the Officer’s class, their retainers and lesser gentry learned under Sir Jeralt, and three specially-chosen mages apprenticed under Manuela. Dedue saw the merit of this recategorization, but he hated to spend so much of his time away from the prince. It had always held the potential for danger, and today that threat bore bitter fruit.

But he was alive, Dedue reminded himself. The prince was alive, and he would recover. Unfortunately, this made leaving his side more difficult, not less. 

"I think you'll make an exemplary knight. But I can understand how this must frustrate you. You're supposed to protect him—" 

"My life has no purpose aside from protecting him. That they would prevent me—!" He heard his own words spiral into volume, quickly cutting the thought with teeth. Mercedes was beloved among all the houses. He was essentially alone in the infirmary with her. He couldn't be careless. "I apologize. I did not intend to raise my voice." 

"I don't think less of you for your passions," she assured him. "We are, all of us, blessed by how dutifully you watch over him. Prince Dimitri could not ask for a better friend." 

Dedue could have argued with her, but Mercedes wouldn't have stopped fussing until she'd ameliorated his feelings, and he didn't deserve that. Her care had to be reserved for the prince. 

"I thought I'd find you here," Jeralt said, appearing as if summoned. The big man filled the doorway, even when minimally armored. He'd earned his legends over the decades, and one would think the tales of Jeralt the Blade Breaker alone had kept away the ravages of time. He wore his advanced age glibly, trimmed and solid as stonework. 

But his voice was close enough to unfamiliar to pluck at Dimitri's consciousness. The prince woke with a gasp and a snarl, and Dedue leapt into action. It was an instinct, born not from his time with the young noble, but with the horses he'd help his father shoe. In Dimitri's voice, he heard a terrified and dangerous animal. Dedue couldn't hope to hold him down, because he'd seen the prince throw an entire horse and rider when they'd first met—his arms had been greenstick-thin back then, but still so terribly strong—but Dedue could be a calm voice in his ear.

Jeralt pulled Mercedes out of harm's way by one graceful wrist, leaving Dedue room to work. He let Dimitri take his weight, pushing him to the bed. It wasn't enough to trap him, but he prayed the familiar sensation would be enough to ground him in this world. There were charms for helping a troubled soul escape from the skeletal grasp of nightmares, but no one in Fódlan knew them. Dedue's mother had never passed that on to him, and even if she had, he doubted the necessary flowers could take root in this land. All he had to give his lord was his voice and his presence. 

"Your Highness, you are safe," Dedue murmured, close to his ear. "You've been injured, but you are safe." 

"Dedue—ah—!" Dimitri twisted under the awakened pain, undulating in a feeble attempt to escape it. He sucked in harsh breaths through his teeth, his voice hoarse.

"You sound like you could use some water." Mercedes shrugged off Jeralt, bustling away to fetch the prince a drink. 

Dedue realized he was still touching Dimitri's shoulder. The skin beneath his palm burned, but he shook with chills. 

"I will return shortly," Dedue began, but the prince grabbed his wrist. The pressure was desperate, bone-crushingly tight, but he did not resist him. 

"No," Dimitri croaked, squinting up at him with dark and unfocused eyes. "Please…" 

"What can I get for you, lad?" Jeralt asked.

"His Highness is feverish," Dedue explained. "In the greenhouse, there is an herb that will help." 

"Mercedes will be back soon, won't she?" 

Dedue could not admit to the knight that he did not trust magic—not as much as a plant he'd grown and tended with his own hands. Magic was wild. It had its own motivations, governed by a god too fickle to be named. He still believed this, though he'd left the majority of his pantheon in the ruins of his homeland. 

"Yes. I suppose she will be." 

"Edelgard…" Dimitri winced, finding the resistance of his re-knit muscles as he tried to sit up more. "Is she…?" 

"Unharmed, thanks to you," Dedue said. 

Dimitri sagged against the mattress. 

"That is a relief." 

Jeralt cocked an eyebrow. "So. Who thought knocking over the brazier was a good idea?" 

Dimitri wheezed a small laugh into his pillow. "Claude." 

"Figures. You're lucky the fire didn't get out of control, but the fact of the matter is his quick thinking likely saved your lives. The gatekeeper saw the smoke, so we went out to investigate. Got there just in time, seems like." 

"Remind me to thank Claude, then." 

"Certainly! But first, you need to drink some water and get back to sleep. You have the hard work of healing ahead of you," Mercedes said, reappearing with a pitcher and a packet of dried herbs. The medic mage had noticed his fever, then, but had said nothing in an attempt to keep Dedue from worrying. She carefully helped Dimitri into a position that didn't pull overmuch on his wounds, and would ensure he didn't choke when he tried to swallow. 

Jeralt eyed Dedue for a moment, then nodded to himself. "It won't kill you to miss one day's training, and it's not like the house head can assign you any tasks in the state he's in. Tomorrow, though? I expect to see you in class." 

Relief suffused Dedue, rich and physical as a hearth's warmth. The explicit permission to stay by his lord's side was a gift. It was something he would have fought for, but he was always so wary of when and where to push back against the monastery's rules. Passivity was the key to survival among these people, at least for someone like himself. He could not afford to be seen as violent. 

"Yes, Sir Jeralt. Thank you." 

Jeralt nodded again and took his leave. Mercedes clapped her hands together, smiling. 

"Lovely! You and I will just have to keep each other company while Prince Dimitri rests, won't we?" 

"I will not bother you while you work." 

"Oh, but there is little work to be done while he sleeps. Usually, I embroider when I'm sitting bedside. I can talk and sew at the same time." 

"I know that my being here is an imposition," Dedue said, gruffly. 

"It's nothing of the sort! I meant what I said about how lucky we Blue Lions are that Dimitri has you by his side. I'd like to take this chance to get to know you better, if you'll let me."

"Ask him about flowers. He loves flowers," Dimitri said, mostly into the folds of his wadded-up pillowcase. 

"Rest, Your Highness. Please." Dedue laid his hand on the round of Dimitri's broad shoulder. The prince mumbled something thick and incomprehensible as he relaxed into Dedue’s touch, his eyes drifting shut. 

"Well," Mercedes whispered, unpacking her needle and thread. Her blue eyes twinkled merrily. "Now you have no choice but to tell me your favorite flowers." 

"I do not have a favorite," Dedue said, comforted by the gentle rhythm of Dimitri's breathing. "The pleasure is in watching each one grow and bloom in its own time."

•

"I can't believe you!" Ingrid shouted, for a third time. "He's our king!" 

"The boar is a prince, and barely that," Felix corrected her. She blew a long hank of her hair out of her face with an angry puff of breath. She was half-unraveling in front of him. 

"A technicality, and you and I both know it. Not that it matters, because Dimitri is our friend," Ingrid said, crossing her arms over her chest. She always had a habit of exercising her stubborn streak at the worst times. 

Felix was tired. He didn't want to keep having this argument, but she had planted herself in the only way in or out of the training grounds. He wouldn't give her the pleasure of his retreat, so he continued his workout and waited for her to exhaust herself. 

"Speak for yourself," he said, sourly. 

"I should slap you. He was your best friend, and he could have died!"

"My best friend  _ did  _ die," Felix said, and she made good on her threat. He'd known she would slap him before he'd said it. Ingrid always saw red when he whittled Glenn's memory into something sharp to jab at her, which was exactly why he did it. Felix couldn't help but resent the fact that everyone else's grief got to cut in line. Glenn had been  _ his  _ brother, but he let them think that didn't hurt him. It got Ingrid to leave, and that was the goal. His cheek throbbed—she'd really put her arm into that smack—but nobody would say anything, even if he ended up bruised. It was expected of him. Sighing deeply, Felix got back to training. 

"Has Ingrid been this way?"

It could have been that he was submerged too deeply in his thoughts, or he could've chalked it up to Sylvain's one true skill being his ability to quietly sneak around, but Felix hadn't heard his approach. Instead of flinching, he channeled the urge into a frown. Let him think he'd been ignoring him. That was easier. 

"You just missed her." 

Sylvain sighed breezily. "Thank the Goddess. My eardrums couldn't handle another round." 

Felix snorted. "What'd you do wrong this time?" 

"I didn't plan my dinner date around His Highness catching an axe," Sylvain said, rolling his eyes. "I mean, I understand why she’s stressed out, but it's not my fault I just happened to be double-booked."

"It was only inevitable that your unchecked appetites would get you in trouble." 

"Yeah? And I suppose Ingrid just popped by for a friendly chat, huh? What's she haranguing you over?"

"I'm busy. She thinks I should be kneeling at the boar's bedside or something. Like that would  _ do  _ anything." 

"You're busy," Sylvain said, surveying the empty training area too pointedly.

"Busier than you were," he countered, mopping sweat off the back of his neck. Errant hanks of hair had worked loose from his bun, sticking uncomfortably to his skin, but he wouldn't let his hair down around Sylvain. He'd doubtless make some comment about how girls had to be jealous of his thick mane, and in the mood he was in that comparison could hit him in a brittle place. He wouldn't allow it. 

"Oh, no, I was  _ busy, _ " Sylvain said, with emphasis. _ " _ You're always training." 

Felix grumbled low in his throat. "And you are always  _ busy. _ "

"Ha! You got me there, Fe." Sylvain leaned in the doorway, his furry red brows rucking together worriedly. "But you aren't really planning to avoid Dimitri entirely, are you? He  _ is _ the king." 

Felix threw his sword. He wouldn't have disrespected a real weapon, but the training sword was a poorly fabricated facsimile. 

"He's just another damn animal until I see a crown on his Goddess-blighted head!"

"Felix, you know nobody likes you enough to support you if you tried to pull a coup, right?" 

Felix regretted having thrown his training sword, because stomping over and picking it up just to throw it again felt like a waste of energy. 

"You're an ass." 

"One of my better traits," Sylvain agreed, patting his own backside. "And if you keep insulting it, I won't co-conspire with you. You can't afford to lose me, pal." 

Felix's mouth twitched, but he refused to give Sylvain a smile. That was his goal, and he was too frustrated to play along. 

"I have no interest in changing my station. Maintaining it is trouble enough." 

"So why the cold shoulder, then? I remember when you and Dima would follow me around everywhere. I wanted to be annoyed, but you were just too dang cute."

The nickname zinged up Felix's spine, crackling and painful as any Thoron spell. It'd been years since he'd heard it. Longer since he'd used it himself.  _ Dima  _ belonged to a pale slip of a boy with wide blue eyes, clumsy as a Great Beast in a church and twice as destructive. Felix hadn't seen that boy die, but he'd witnessed the horror of his bloodthirsty corpse. He was no more whole than a cicada shell. 

"Hanging onto that oozing nostalgia is a liability," Felix said, his voice low. "Watch him fight. You'll see what I mean."

•

"If the Blue Lions cannot comport themselves without Prince Dimitri's leadership on the battlefield, they've already failed the objective of the mock battle," Ferdinand said, gesturing grandly with his fork. It was a rare rudeness, but he was worked up. "However! The Black Eagles and Golden Deer should be allowed to carry on without them. It is simply disgraceful that we are denied this opportunity to prove our competence." 

"The Black Eagles need not prove anything. Anyone who doubts Lady Edelgard's abilities as a leader is a fool," Hubert said, a flinty look in his dark eyes. 

"My point, actually, was that—unlike the Blue Lions—our House could function ably if Edelgard were not there." 

Hubert bristled. "You  _ will _ address Lady Edelgard with the deference she deserves." 

Edelgard sighed loudly. 

"Enough." Pushing back her chair, she stood. Hubert tensed, moving to follow her, but she stilled him with a raised palm. "Finish your meal, Hubert. I will turn in early. Despite the cancellation, we can't sit on the laurels of a fight we only hypothetically won. Tomorrow, we go back to training as per usual. Goodnight."

"Your Highness—" Hubert tried to say, shooting Ferdinand a glare ferocious enough to singe hair. 

"Goodnight," Edelgard repeated, and he recognized it for the order it was. If he tailed her out of the dining hall, he waited until she'd left to make a move. That was close enough, she supposed. 

It wasn't that Ferdinand's comments had gotten to her. She was used to his attempts to rile and unsettle her—they'd started when they were children, and had only increased in their pointedness since they'd come to the Academy. Knowing all she did about his father, she had no doubt that the Prime Minister filled his letters with tear-downs and perceived weaknesses, priming Ferdinand for a power struggle he had neither the heart nor stomach to pursue. She could forgive Ferdinand, most days, but her failure in the woods had left her feeling drained. 

And it was a failure, too. She had to face and name it for what it was. She should have anticipated that Kostas, coward that he was, would take the mission objective of harming the three nobles to mean picking off what he saw as the weakest of them. As the Flame Emperor, she'd weighed the cost of showing her hand—warning the bandit not to hurt her, thereby implicating the Empire in the strike—and that shrewdness had backfired. She'd intended to prove the Church's inability to protect their politically precious charges, and in that regard she'd succeeded. Prince Dimitri had been injured. 

But satisfaction was the furthest thing from her mind. Her heart ached, and she didn't know how to begin to soothe it.

If she'd been asked, Edelgard would have claimed to have never met Prince Dimitri prior to enrolling in the Academy. It would have been truthful, but it wouldn't have been the truth. When Dimitri had bounded in front of her, his eyes wild with fear, he'd called her name. 

_ El.  _ Not Edelgard. He'd used the pretty little name her mother and sisters had favored, guarded jealously in the years since she'd lost the last of them. There was no way that he should have known—Hubert knew of the nickname, but would likely have refused to repeat it even under the threat of torture. The Kingdom had spies, but no one should have been able to expect the power such a small thing could have over her. Dimitri couldn't have known of El, unless she'd told him herself. 

And she did not remember that.

There was no space in an emperor for holes. Edelgard knew this, as core to her person as her heartbeat, so she did not allow room for the truth: Her record of self was a tatters of redaction and revision, manipulated by too many hands. She'd had no choice in those changes, so she resisted in the only way she knew how—willfully. She ignored what was lost, pretending at perfect armor, and sometimes she did it so convincingly she fooled even herself. But then, something would find the edges of her frayed self, full of nerves and half-remembered light. Memory was a painful thing, in her experience. She had no choice but to be alone with what she could recall, sodden with ghosts and the sureness that she'd never recover it all. 

There had been a boy, though, Edelgard thought as she watched the first star work its way through the colored silks of the setting sun. In the Kingdom, long ago, there had been a boy named Dima, who had the kindest eyes she'd ever known. 

She saw the shape of that boy in the crown prince's frame, and that scared her. 

"Gold piece for your thoughts, Your Highness? Or half. I'm not loaded," Dorothea said, her voice warm with gentle humor.

"Ah. Ms. Arnault. Good evening," Edelgard said, clearing her throat. She hoped it masked how lost she'd been inside herself. Self-reflection was a dangerous pastime. 

"Just Dorothea is fine," the songstress said, brushing back a curl of her glossy brown hair. Unlike Edelgard's, which found excuses to snarl when looked at wrong, the artful waves of her long hair tousled gamely in the evening breeze. 

"How are you liking the Academy so far, Dorothea?" Edelgard asked, firmly steering away from her own thoughts and placing politeness between them as a backstop. 

"I am so honored that you thought highly enough of my magical abilities to offer me this opportunity. Garreg Mach is beautiful."

Edelgard could hardly admit how much Dorothea's smile had influenced the outcome for this year's Black Eagle House Medic. Thankfully, she was proving to be as magically talented as she was lovely. Hubert's most recent report had included her affinity for Meteor, which Edelgard was looking forward to seeing on the field. The medic position was chiefly intended as support, but in her estimation a strong offense cut down on the need for wound-patching. 

"I am happy to hear that," she said, and meant it. 

Dorothea smiled faintly. "It really does matter to you, doesn't it?"

It felt like a compliment, but she couldn't be sure.

"In my experience, the best suited candidate for any position is happiest there, and vice versa," Edelgard said, magnanimously. "I want that success for everyone in our House."

"I'm counting down the days to your coronation." Dorothea winked. "I already have my dress picked out."

It shouldn't have left Edelgard tongue-tied, yet she stumbled with the proper response.

"Oh. That is—that is kind. You are kind. Thank you." She smoothed down her hair, suddenly very sure it was a flyaway mess. "I hope to see it, when that day comes."

Dorothea's smile widened. "I'll make sure you do."

•

Linhardt believed in preparation and patience. He was not what anyone would deem a high-energy individual, so he used his reserves thoughtfully and with care. After the midmorning shock of nearly drowning a Saint, he'd returned to his room to nap, ponder, and nap again for good measure. Cichol was too overburdened with responsibilities to punish him for missing his lessons, and he knew how to avoid his house leader's attempts to drag him into class, so the rest of the day was spent going over the misadventure. The chiming of the end-of-session bells woke him up, and once the moon rose to fullness above and his classmates's doors shut for the night, he stole into the dining hall. His scoops of peach sorbet weren't as neat as Mercedes's, and he didn't trust himself with knives to pretty up the fruit like she did, but he got the job done well enough. With a glass serving dish in each hand, he hurried out of the dining hall and into the long shadows of the courtyard.

His risk had been perfectly calculated. As he'd suspected, Saint Cethleann was sitting at the end of the dock, her long white robes wadded around her knees so she could dangle her bare toes in the water. He'd mentally noted her habit of watching the moon on the water long after the students had gone to bed, but he'd always given her a wide berth for fear of his own discovery. Usually, he had monastery nooks and crannies to explore in the quiet of deep night, and, more importantly, books to read, but he'd sneaked out tonight with this exact encounter in mind.

"Enjoying the breeze, Your Grace?" Linhardt asked, and offered her one of the dishes of peach sorbet. Mercedes had assured him it was one of Saint Cethleann's favorites. 

"Oh! Hello, Linhardt," she said, taking the sorbet with a smile. Indeed, it would seem that he hadn't misremembered things in the heat of that awkward moment earlier. She really  _ did  _ know his name. 

"Would you like company? I merely thought I might repay you for not being angry that I am...hm. Something of a stumbling block." 

"You need not waste even a single breath more apologizing to me, but I won't say no to sorbet," she said, spooning up a bite he would have labeled unladylike, if she were not something of a model for well-born women. "I am surprised you knew I would be here."

"I've noticed you out here before, but I didn't want to disturb you. You are, after all, Saint Cethleann," Linhardt said, sitting down next to her. 

"So I am," she said, with an unmistakable touch of bitterness.

"I do not doubt your authenticity, you know," he said, curious as to the shape of her unhappiness. He paced the possible outer edge of it. "I can tell you carry the Crest named after yourself, as I bear it as well. An interesting sensation, by the by. I'd seen the ability to recognize Crest cohorts described in books, but I had never experienced it for myself prior to meeting you."

"Not an unpleasant sensation, I hope?"

"Not at all. I was sure I would not get to meet another with this Crest until I married and had children of my own, so I'm glad to have circumvented that by at least a decade. At one time, yours was one of the more common Crests, but the bloodline has weakened. Unlike the more powerful Crests, ours is not high-priority among upwardly mobile nobility."

"A shame," she murmured, chin tucked. 

Linhardt shrugged. "Well, I suppose you can start having children again, if passing on your Crest is that important to you."

_ "Again?" _ Cethleann burbled with nervous laughter. "I assure you I have never been married."

"Then the records were correct. How is it that your Crest came to be passed on, if not through maternal inheritance?"

"Some other method, I should think."

"You think there's another way for Crests to be passed down? Fascinating!" He tried to catch her eye, but she looked purposefully away. 

"I am unsure what that would mean," Cethleann said, suddenly very busy with drawing patterns in her melting sorbet with the end of her spoon.

"You understand why I would question why  _ you _ do not know the answer to this."

"I slept for a thousand years. My memory is… It is not what it once was," she hedged, her voice shrunken to a soft and pitiable thing. Linhardt frowned. 

"And again, it seems I must apologize, Your Grace. I have made you uncomfortable. The question has just… It has bothered me since I was a child, and no one has ever been able to satisfy my curiosity. I only agreed to attend the Officers Academy because I thought the library here would shed some light on the strange path of my inheritance, but I have had no luck. If you don't know, then…" Linhardt let the thought drift, sighing.

"I wish I could help you, but I am almost glad I cannot," she said, and he could practically hear the care she took choosing her words. "If such a method existed, the knowledge could prove dangerous in the wrong hands, don't you agree?"

"Perhaps it would escalate the violence in Fódlan, yes. Perhaps it would devalue the importance of Crests, reshaping the world in the other direction. One could chase those hypotheticals endlessly. My search continues."

"If it has bothered you for so long, I am surprised you did not seek me out before now."

"Before now, I didn't know a Saint could trip," Linhardt said, setting aside his finished sorbet.

"I fail to see what that has to do with anything!"

"Your patience is well-documented, but I didn't want to personally test its limits. I don't hold you at all responsible for your own fall into the pond, of course, but I thought that you might be more likely to indulge a pestering student if you'd met him already. And were given an appropriate offering, naturally."

"I cherish the opportunity to get to know you better. There are other questions I might be able to answer for you, if my memory cooperates."

"I feel I should warn you that I am naturally very curious."

"I suspected that may be the case. But I do welcome it, truly. I fear that I may be seen as unapproachable. By those who have not witnessed my clumsy side, that is."

This was to be expected—she was a Saint, descended from the Goddess Herself—but he suspected she did not want to hear that. It was a strange paradox, and he'd have to think on it later, between naps. 

"So," Linhardt said, pulling off one of his boots, then the other. "What is the best thing you remember about the past?"

"There was a lovely village near the Rhodos coast where I spent many years when I was young. The people there were seafaring, and participating in the natural cycles of the tide and the catch was their way of worship. Their simple way of life never made it into the history books. As far as I can tell, their names were forgotten by those who followed." Saint Cethleann blinked, seeming to remember herself. "I am sorry. I did not intend to answer so selfishly. That was not the kind of thing you were hoping to learn, was it?"

"Selfish? No. It was an honest answer, and I value that." Leaning over, Linhardt rolled his pants up past his ankles, then let his feet dangle in the cool water.

Being so much shorter, Saint Cethleann's feet barely reached the waterline. Her toes just kissed the surface. 

"Have you ever been to Rhodos?" she asked. Linhardt marveled at the simplicity of the question. He could almost forget who was asking him, if he watched the moon as she did, instead of looking at her voluminous formal white robes. He wondered if that's what she wanted, and why. 

"No. Is it so different from the south? My family's holdings extend from the Oghma mountains down the coastline, so I have visited several times."

"The Northern Ocean is rougher, I think. The fish are bigger. In fact, my mother would take me out during the Great Sea Serpent migration so I could hear them sing." Saint Cethleann closed her eyes, radiating a peace that made Linhardt yawn despite his best efforts. She was calming to be around, but he doubted she'd react well if he nodded off mid-conversation. Most people took it personally. "They're magnificent. So gentle."

"I will, unfortunately, have to take your word for that," Linhardt said. He wanted to find a gentle way to say it, but the fact didn't yield. "Great Northern Serpents haven't been seen in several hundred years."

"Oh." The word was punctuated, flat. Linhardt found himself unable to let it hang. 

"They have not been seen, but that does not necessarily mean they're all gone," he quickly added. "To wit, I was not aware that they were migratory creatures. Perhaps your knowledge of them will aid in their modern-day rediscovery."

"Perhaps." She stared up with a sigh, like she'd find the shape of those forgotten beasts hiding behind the bright disc of the moon. "I would like to go back, someday."

She looked lonelier for his presence, and he hated that. Linhardt was so rarely called to cheer people up, he groped for an appropriate response. The only person he made the effort of appeasing was Caspar, and it was a simple enough task to suggest things for Caspar to break until his mood improved. He'd done his research on Saint Cethleann, but the books described an ideal, not the girl wilting on the edge of the dock, a dribble of melted sorbet staining a vivid orange patch on her impeccable robes. 

"If Saint Cethleann suggested a seaside trip, nobody would deny her. I, for one, would not complain. I enjoy fishing."

She lit up, a brightness so charming she outshone the night sky. "As do I!"

"A remarkably pedestrian pastime for one such as yourself."

"I have to eat like any other person, do I not? And I just so happen to favor fish," she said, and her put-upon crossness made him laugh. 

"It was not my intention to imply that your tastes are not suitably elevated to your station."

She rolled her lower lip between her teeth, hesitating for a moment before she said, "If I asked you to call me Cethleann—simply Cethleann—would you?"

"Of course. If that's what you prefer."

"It has been some time since I was able to just...to talk. It is a small pleasure, and I have missed it terribly." She toyed idly with her ear, finger curled over the point. The gesture was almost nervous. "I cannot encourage you to shirk curfew, but if you should see me out here again, I would welcome your company."

"I would like that, Cethleann," Linhardt said, and was pleased to find that the familiarity didn't feel bulky or unearned. "I will endeavor to follow the rules Saint Cichol has so wisely set for us, but if I find myself unable to sleep, I'll check here for you." 

It was glibness on Linhardt's behalf, but she didn't know him well enough to see the joke for what it was. He had never once struggled to fall asleep. A nap lurked behind his every overlong blink.

Cethleann beamed at him, the moonlight illuminating all the brighter for her happiness. It occurred to him that she was beautiful, and while it was a fact, it felt inconvenient. Linhardt chose not to acknowledge it.


	2. Familiar Scenery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The children are feral, but Saint Cichol tries his best. The students march toward their future; queer feelings pursue, relentless.

Her crown was heavy, but she'd known it would be. Gravity pulled at it, demanding she tip her head to the pitiful wretch at her feet. The boy who'd wanted to be kind, but could only be king, was defeated. His misery shrank him, slick with rain and blood and stinking of the poorly-tanned Giant Wolf hide wrapped around his broad shoulders. Empathy tried to stir in her, but she found its long throat and quieted it with both hands. For every step she'd taken on this bloodied knife's edge of a path, she'd known it would someday bring her here. 

"Edelgard, you—I will kill you! You will know the regret of my father, who was killed for you! Of my stepmother, who was slain by her own daughter! You will bow your head before all of the lives you trampled for your ideals before you die in misery!"

There was no sense in his accusations. From everything her spies had told her, the king's losses had broken something within him. He had convinced himself that she had planted poison pips with every touch they'd shared over the years, and to argue with him now would be as futile as trying to talk sense into an animal. It was a wonder that his teacher stood by his side still, but she'd always been something of a cipher at the Emperor's periphery. She had kept her eyes so focused on the future, she struggled to see the king's failed guide standing behind him. There was unknowable fuzz where a memory should be. The too-bright green of her burned and flickered in the torrential downpour. 

"Your obsession with me is appalling. If you were a normal human, you would most certainly have died already." Her hands gripped the length of her axe, its horrible heartbeat thrumming through her gloves. It knew it would drink deep, and soon. "Farewell, King of Delusion. If only we were born in a time of peace, you may have lived a joyful life as a benevolent ruler."

She didn't know how to apologize to him, but she was sorry. His destruction was necessary; her advisors had assured her he was too close to the Archbishop to ever see reason. And they'd been right, hadn't they? She readied her weapon, braced against the path it would need to take through his chest. 

He bared his teeth, filmed pink with blood. "To the fires of eternity with you, El." 

The word, the name, echoed. It twisted, pulling itself from a guttural snarl to a soft exhalation, almost a sigh. The sound of it left her undone, unraveling her with the fragility of charred oak collapsing into ash. She fell to her knees, made too vulnerable by his voice. 

"El," he repeated, this time looming over her. He reached out his hand, and what remained of her resolve coiled up inside her. It was a farce, of course. He had to have known that she saw through it. Whatever it was that he thought he knew of her was based on the shape of a girl she could hardly recall for herself. The idea of accepting his hand, of acknowledging her own weakness, filled her with sickness. 

Her ruined organs sloshed within her, acid and regret and the unkindness of entropy. She'd thrown her body on the pyre of the future again and again, but no matter how she'd burned it never seemed any brighter. He knew it; she saw that reflected in his remaining eye, and that he could see within her what she could not left her breathless with frustrated rage. If he endured, if he prevailed, all that had been taken from her would mean nothing. She could not live with the senselessness of the carnage inflicted upon her. To admit that it'd had no purpose would be greater than any defeat, so she found the hilt of her dagger, wrapped her shaking fingers around it, and—

And a hand found hers, squeezing tightly. The warmth of it alone was a rebuke. 

"You don't have to make this mistake," a familiar voice whispered in her ear, the coolest green imaginable. He smelled like peppermint, sounded like juniper tasted. He pulled her to him, her back flush to his chest, and her Crest sang in recognition against his unbeating heart. She folded in her teacher's arms, accepting his restraint, desperate for his guidance.

 _Tell me what to do, Master,_ she wanted to beg, _just show me where I went wrong and—_

Edelgard woke up still pleading, her face wet from tears. 

  
  
  


*

  
  


Hilda needed her beauty sleep. This was an excuse she regularly deployed to get out of evening conversations that had stopped being fun, but that didn't make it less true. The world deserved her polished best, and that took time. The habit of early to bed and early to rise had been drilled into her by her father, a military man, but the schedule also ensured that her hair and makeup were perfect. This was Hilda's version of battle, and she prepared appropriately. She could not allow her quality to dip.

Unfortunately, Edelgard's nightmares struck in the sorest point of the grayish predawn. 

Overtiredness hit Hilda's patience hardest of all. She glared at her half-finished letter to her brother, frustrated by her inability to compose a nicer way of telling Holst that she didn't really _care_ that his gross sloppy boyfriend, Balthus, had run off. All sibling biases aside, Holst was handsome. Her brother was a legitimate folk hero. He could do way better than a loudmouth gambler from some backwater mountain village. 

Hilda sighed halfheartedly, scratching her nib through _Sorry Baltie's a huge flake._ She mostly didn't care if Holst could read it. She was right. 

"Oof. That sigh had baggage," Dorothea said. She folded her dusting cloth in half, then attacked the long-neglected back of the upper library shelves. The former songstress was taller, so Hilda had pointed out that it only made _sense_ for her to do the cleaning they'd been assigned.

"Ugh. I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in forever," Hilda said. She really put her back into her next sigh, so Dorothea would know she was acting. It was the truth, and she didn't enjoy feeling like she was opening up. It wasn't like she would see two-thirds or more of her classmates ever again after they graduated. "It's turned me into a total cranky baby." 

"I'm sorry to hear that," Dorothea said, moving down to the next shelves. "Have you talked to Manuela about it?"

Hilda _pondered,_ nibbling her lip. As expected, the conversation was cuddling toward an implicit invitation to share. Dorothea was a shooting star of a commoner, clever in a way Hilda both respected and understood. Dorothea was bright enough to ascribe the correct value of the information she planned to share—and, more importantly, would remember the favor. 

Good Faith often paid rich dividends. Dorothea had every reason to be generous with any shiny little bit of news that might tickle Hilda's fancy, given her position as a well-connected noble, and Hilda was very curious what might come of that perceived debt. Something fun, she hoped. She had a feeling Dorothea knew a thing or two about having a good time.

"See, that's the problem. It's not _me_ having the nightmares. It's _Edelgard_ ." Dropping her voice to a whisper, she added, "She wakes up _screaming_. I can hear it through the wall. What do you think got to her that bad?" 

Dorothea's eyes widened, her hand flying to her throat. It was a prettily practiced gesture, but it looked like it'd become natural for her along the way. That, too, was something Hilda understood.

"Screaming?" Dorothea echoed. "I wish I knew. She's not the most approachable house leader." 

"They all can't be Claude," Hilda said, sing-song. 

Dorothea rolled her eyes, balling up the gross rag. "One of _him_ is enough."

"Oh, he's a charmer once you get past the fake smile," she said, because it was fun to tip just a flash of someone else's weakness. It didn't hurt her any, after all. "You know, you should probably keep what I said about Edelgard to yourself. I doubt Her Highness wants her dirty laundry aired." 

"My lips are sealed," Dorothea said, which was a popular lie among the girls who were really _good_ at gossiping. 

  
  


*

  
  


Caspar was not a poetic kind of guy. He was a doer, engaging with the world fists-first. He didn't waste a lot of time just looking, spending time with his thoughts. But Sir Jeralt was big on learning by example, so Caspar had to stare hard at Ashe. Watching the lithe Faerghan boy demonstrate proper archery form go Caspar thinking all kinds of poetic junk. He couldn't help but notice the way the pale, freckled path of skin from Ashe's neck to his shoulder shivered with tension just before he loosed an arrow. The graceful spring-sway of his movements reminded Caspar of slender green trees in the wind. He didn't usually notice that kind of thing. Ashe must've been a really good archer or something. 

"Hey, Cas? Are you listening?"

"Sure!" Caspar said, hoping that Ashe wouldn't ask any clarifying questions if he responded enthusiastically enough. 

Ashe laughed. He clearly wasn't convinced, but he wasn't mad about it, either. 

"I was saying, you need to loosen up. You don't hold a bow the way you'd grip an axe." 

“I’m never gonna get this,” Caspar said, huffing a sigh. “It just feels unnatural!” 

“You have to let the tension of the string do its work. The bow is about your breathing and accuracy, not your strength.” Ashe pulled up the hem of his tunic, dabbing at his forehead sweat before the beads had a chance to roll down and sting his eyes. “Which is why _I_ can excel at it.”

“You’re strong enough. When it counts.” 

Caspar couldn't remember the last time he'd been so happy. The tactics lectures could be kind of hard sometimes, but all the hours the knights spent engaged in hands-on training were awesome. Caspar's brother had made a big show of acting like he pitied him before he'd left for the Academy, but he'd ignored him. He was glad the Archbishop had rearranged the classes. Caspar would've floundered in a proper noble's school, but knight stuff made him look _great_. 

Finally, Caspar had a bunch of classmates who liked training as much as he did. After years of pestering Linhardt to spar with him—and only getting limp responses from him at best—life in the monastery was pretty close to bliss. Even the worst stuff he had to learn, like archery, didn’t itch at his skin until it felt too tight on his bones. It helped that Ashe was always willing to work with him, of course. Ignatz lacked the confidence in his own abilities too severely to pass on what he knew, but Ashe was patient. He enjoyed teaching, and he didn’t make Caspar feel like he was wasting his time by taking too long to learn. 

More than just a sparring buddy, Ashe was a friend. Caspar’s father would’ve blown a major blood vessel at the idea that a common-born kid from the Kingdom could be an appropriate ally for even his spare heir, but that just showed that his dad didn’t know everything. On the battlefield, sure. But it wasn’t like Count Bergliez had many friends who weren’t his subordinate officers. Heck, Caspar wasn’t sure his father talked to _anyone_ who wasn’t a noble or a soldier under his command.

“Try it again. Remember what I told you,” Ashe said, passing him the practice bow and an arrow.

“Loose grip,” Caspar said, though his brain already had objections ready to lodge. If he didn’t hold it tight enough, it’d spring back, the arrow wobbling pitifully if it flew at all.

“And don’t forget to breathe,” Ashe said, smiling encouragingly. It crinkled up at the corners of his seaglass-green eyes. He definitely get crow’s feet there, eventually. Caspar didn’t know many old guys with smile lines, so he was glad to have at least one stuck in his future. Ashe would go back to Faerghus after they graduated, since his younger siblings still lived with Lord Lonato of House Gaspard, but they’d still be friends. Of that, Caspar was certain. 

He took a loud breath, exhaling theatrically. Squinting at the stuffed target, he lined up the bullseye past the arrowhead. He pulled back, but the bow felt unsteady—

“Looser!” Ashe tried to say, but it was too late for correction. Caspar had panicked, grabbing the center of the bow as he let the arrow fly. His muscles trembled, but not in the perfectly controlled way he’d admired in Ashe’s form; the string snapped the inside of his elbow, carving the tender skin with a hot red weal.

“See! _See!_ ” Caspar shouted, his frustration reeling in everyone’s attention. Ignatz smacked Raphael’s tree-trunk torso with his blunt training axe, surprised mid-strike. Thankfully, between Raphael’s bulk and Ignatz’s lack thereof, he wasn’t injured. Dedue and Jeritza didn't stop swinging their axes, though that had more to do with Jeritza's ferocious focus and Dedue's understanding that any hesitancy on his end would earn him an injury. “I told you I’m never gonna get this.” 

“There are other weapons. You don’t have to master them all to be a good knight,” Ashe said. If anyone else had tried out that line, Caspar would’ve popped them in the mouth for making fun of him, but he knew that Ashe meant it from the bottom of his too-big heart. 

“I guess,” Caspar said, wanting to be sullen about it but finding it difficult to mope when Ashe was still smiling at him. “It doesn’t matter if I’ve already got one of the best archers around covering my back, right?” 

“Right,” Ashe agreed without hesitation. Caspar was glad. Ashe tended to be modest, so he'd thought he'd try to argue the point of his mastery, but he probably hadn't even heard the compliment.

"Go ahead and rotate!" Jeralt called from the shadiest corner of the ring. There were an uneven number of knights in training—Ignatz and Raphael from the Alliance, Caspar and Jeritza from the Empire, Dedue and Ashe from the Kingdom, and the young Gatekeeper who'd been born and raised in Garreg Mach itself. Since Jeralt favored one-on-one instruction, he had them rotate so the odd man out had a moment to drink some water, rest, and get a personal assessment from the Blade Breaker himself.

To the uninformed, it might have looked like Sir Jeralt was not actively teaching his class. True: He didn’t spar with them, aside from the rare demonstration of a technique that none of his students had encountered prior to joining the Academy, but he was minding more than his flask in the corner. He watched raptly, and Caspar was always surprised by his ability to pick up on the smallest movements and weak points from his customary position beneath the overhang. Jeralt was one of the best fighters in the world, and he cared about them growing into the best possible knights they could be. Caspar knew he was lucky, no matter what his jerk of a brother said. This was exactly where he was supposed to be. 

The Gatekeeper joined Dedue, Jeritza went to take a turn teaching swordsmanship to Raphael—or making snippy comments at him while they both held swords, at least—Ignatz swapped in to share some of his archery tips with Ashe, and Caspar got to mop his sweat and get his chops busted by the Captain of the Knights of Seiros. 

“You need to listen when it’s your turn to learn,” Jeralt said by way of greeting. Caspar wrung the sticky back of his neck with his palm, sighing. 

“I know. I’m trying.” 

“Couldn’t tell from over here,” Jeralt said, swigging from his flask. “Do you at least know what you were doing wrong?” 

“Yeah, it was my grip. Ashe already told me.” 

“He’s a good shot. Shame that old Lonato sent him here as an indulgence.” 

“What? Ashe is gonna be an awesome knight,” Caspar argued, taking care to keep his voice down for once. It’d just _kill_ Ashe. Maybe Jeralt wasn’t as perceptive as he’d thought. 

“It’s better for someone like him if he doesn’t need to make his living through bloodshed. Lonato’s son, Christophe, will inherit his title and land, but making Ashe a knight will keep him with the family at Castle Gaspard. This is a formality.” 

Caspar forced himself to unclench his jaw. Sir Jeralt could be bracing, but that was a personality trait Caspar was working on himself. 

“He’ll use it as an excuse to help people. He’s like that.” 

“What about you? Your father doesn’t seem the type to hand out jobs.” 

Caspar snorted.

“If he could get away with it, he'd name his favorite hunting dog the next Count Bergliez over my brother or me. There are other people out there who’ll hire me. If you ignore the bow, I’m pretty much the perfect knight.” 

“Perfectly expendable is how they like their knights,” Sir Jeralt said, drinking deeply.

“What?” It should have come out as a shout, but surprise had punched Caspar right in the chest. He was good at the knight stuff. He _knew_ he was good at the knight stuff. But suddenly, he felt like he’d never believed that—and was dense for having deluded himself that Garreg Mach would be any different than the expensive tutors that’d been bad at explaining Reason to him, but extremely good at explaining his shortcomings to his father. 

"You're a Crestless noble without a title claim. You're not even magically inclined.” Jeralt indicated the other knights-in-training with a dip of his head. “ _They_ all know they're never going to turn the tides of battle. Do you?"

Caspar laughed. He didn’t mean to. “I can still swing an axe, and that’s something, isn’t it?”

"Then again, I guess there's not much else you have to contribute," Jeralt said, like he hadn’t heard him. 

"Yeah," Caspar said, feeling kind of weird to be agreeing. The shock of it was withering. Even though he knew he wasn’t a big guy, he rarely felt small. The sensation went down like a nasty spoonful of Albinean herring liver oil. "I guess so." 

  
  


*

  
  


"Are you or are you not prepared to do anything to win, no matter the cost?" Felix asked, his narrowed eyes glittering with malevolent intent. 

"Of course!" Ferdinand said. "But, well, perhaps not _anything_."

" _Wrong answer!_ " Felix bellowed, slapping the desk with his palm. 

"Yeah," Sylvain said, helpfully. "What if the cost of winning is defeat?" 

The children did not believe that Cichol knew what they were doing. They seemed pleased with themselves, having discovered ways to burn through their allotted time in the classroom—Sylvain especially. The would-be margrave had a special knack for winding Felix up, and he used it to disrupt Cichol's lesson plans with a precision he would have found admirable if it hadn't been so frustrating. The young nobles had strong opinions, and many of them stood in opposition. They were not content to simply listen to Cichol's nearly twelve hundred years of military experience—oh, no. That would be too easy, and they all thought themselves informed enough about the world already.

He could never admit it to his daughter, but one of the reasons Cichol didn't want Cethleann to join the nobles' class was that he did not relish the thought of her seeing how little control he exercised over the students. 

Lorenz always raised his hand, even if he didn't know the answer, whereas Claude never offered answers, but always had them if called upon. If Felix couldn't get Ferdinand to argue with him over what was 'unfair' on the battlefield, he needled Dimitri until the prince invariably snapped a quill—or, on one notable occasion, put his fist entirely through the desk—over misapplied frustration. Lysithea read quietly and wrathfully in a corner until she could not handle her classmates' squabbling any longer; those were the worst disturbances, because he was never sure if it would help or increase the overall lethality of the situation if he suggested they take their dispute to the training grounds. Hubert's blasé view on how many wells could be poisoned before it had political ramifications had a habit of keeping Cichol awake with worry for the Empire's direction—doubly so whenever Edelgard rather pointedly failed to reprimand her steward's eagerness to eliminate perceived enemies. The only thing Hilda ever brought to class was an excuse as to why she didn't do the reading, and Cichol hated that this made her one of his better students. His favorite student did not even attend at all; he knew her only by the charming marginalia she drew on the work she slid under his door at odd hours. He'd taught her exactly nothing thus far, and that did not make him feel very accomplished. For a Saint.

The end-of-day bells chimed outside, and Cichol sighed inwardly. He chose not to focus on how little of his lesson plan had made it into the lecture, and would instead simply retool it for the next day. He'd lost many of his abilities over the elongated arc of his life, but he still had a dragon's patience. They _would_ learn, eventually. 

"Ingrid and Ferdinand, I would like a moment of your time before you go," Cichol said, interrupting the barely-restrained scramble for the door. 

"Oooh—" Sylvain started to tease, but his sing-song turned into an "oof" of pain as Ingrid got him in the ribs with a forcefully applied elbow. The rest of the students filed out, and Cichol tried not to take it personally that they were so eager to escape. 

"Master Aegir, I would like you to help me with one of your housemates. Bernadetta has not attended class yet this week, and I fear her lack of consistency will cause her to fall behind the rest of you." 

Ferdinand's brows arched with surprise and interest. "Have you not consulted with Edelgard on the matter? She is the head of our house, after all." 

"True, but I would rather not make Bernadetta feel unduly punished," Cichol said, delicately. "I hope that someone as energetic as yourself would be able to share his motivation with her."

"Oh, you were right to come to me with this task, Your Grace. I, Ferdinand von Aegir, will see to it that Bernadetta joins us under your tutelage! Edelgard's touch is hardly gentle enough to effectively push Bernadetta toward the correct path."

His brother had been the more gifted tactician, but Cichol knew his way around human foibles. As he'd anticipated, Ferdinand practically glittered with pleasure at the slight against his future monarch. To be seen as more tactful than Edelgard was motivation enough for Ferdinand, whether or not it was strictly true. Either way, Cichol thought that a demand for Bernadetta to leave the comfort and safety of her room would be easier for her to accept when delivered by Ferdinand's bombastic cheer. He hoped so, at least. He worried that any personal intervention from him would do Bernadetta more harm than good. 

"And I thank you. You may leave." 

Ferdinand snapped a crisp bow, all but floating away on the cloud of his fluffed-up pride. The young man meant well, Cichol knew. His heart was good, solid and simple in a way that made the Archbishop glad he'd chosen his forefather as a recipient of the too-precious gift of Nabatean blood. The line wasn't without its rot—Ferdinand's father, the current Prime Minister, was proof enough of this—but Cichol had hope that the youngest Crest-bearer would do much with his power. 

"I need to do a better job of controlling Felix and Sylvain. I know. I'm sorry," Ingrid blurted out, before Cichol had a chance to open their private conversation from a tactful entry point. He caught his tongue just before he apologized to her in turn; she did not need to hear that he took responsibility for his unruly students. It was unbecoming for an Archbishop to accept fault. At least, this was the example that Seiros had left him with. 

"Their conduct is not yours to manage," Cichol said, firmly capping the inkwell. Cyril would be through to tidy up as soon as he left the room, but he took care to leave the boy with as few chores as he'd accept. Cyril would work himself past exhaustion if Cichol didn't monitor him, and he had not taken the boy from the war encampment to make him a servant. "Actually, I had hoped to discuss your goals here at Garreg Mach." 

"Goals, Your Grace?" Ingrid repeated, the worry line between her pale brows digging deeper.

"Yes. When you imagine the future, where do you see yourself? It has not missed my notice that you have not engaged with the material as readily as...well, as even Felix and Sylvain have, to be blunt." 

Ingrid flushed a startled scarlet.

"I'll try harder—" 

Cichol stilled her with a hand. "That is not what I asked. Please, indulge my question." 

"House Galatea will not survive another generation if I don't make a good match. Aside from myself, our line has been as barren as the land." He could see the weight as if it held physical heft, bowing her back and shoulders. “I was engaged at birth to a well-positioned but Crestless noble son, but he died before I came of age.” 

"Such a responsibility to carry," he murmured, knowing that these people hung everything on the powers their ancestors had cravenly gnawed from the marrow of Nabatean bones and nothing he could say would relieve her of the gruesome burden. 

"My father has sacrificed so much to get me here,” Ingrid said, her tone going stubbornly hard. He heard Duke Galatea, though he’d never met the man. “It's an _honor_ to repay him by ensuring I provide for our home and the people who rely on us." 

"But if this were not the case?" Cichol pressed, gently.

For a too-still moment, he thought he’d overstepped, but then her shoulders hitched with a tight breath. 

"I think I'd be an excellent knight," Ingrid admitted, quick and quiet. 

"And I agree." 

"You do?" She asked, comically wide-eyed. 

"As does Sir Jeralt. If you would like to split your time between our classes, well. I do not see why your father would need to be informed."

Ingrid looked down and away. "It'd be a waste of Sir Jeralt's time." 

"I speak on this matter as an expert. I am a father, you know. And as a father, I can assure you that Duke Galatea wishes most for your happiness as well as your strength. Had I not taught my Cethleann to defend herself, I would have buried her alongside her mother.” Ordinarily, Cichol had no choice but to distance himself from his daughter. The Church demanded he be a Saint, and a father was oftentimes too mortal a role to be compatible with his position. For the purpose of this conversation, he allowed himself to speak frankly. Her own father could not give Ingrid this peace, so Cichol hoped to do it in his stead. “Be you not afraid of strength, Ingrid. A man who thinks less of you as a potential wife due to your abilities as a knight is hardly a man at all. Follow the blessings the Goddess has given you, for in them lies the key to your bright future."

Ingrid's eyes shone for want of weeping. Cichol cleared his throat, stacking and shoring up parchment. 

"So I shall talk to Sir Jeralt about making arrangements then, yes?" 

Ingrid nodded jerkily, seemingly unable to manipulate words around the lump stopping up her tears.

"Excellent. You may go," Cichol said, because by his estimation the Archbishop should be, first and foremost, a merciful person. Seiros might have disagreed with his theology, but she was not around to defend her position. Cichol had always held a weakness for humans. 

Ingrid escaped like a Demonic Beast was chasing her, not the urge to cry. As a culture, Faerghus was harsh on its children. They feared softness, like the frigid land itself would sense the weakness and punish them for it if not excised before puberty. Cichol couldn't change that, but he could try to expose them to other ways of living—of being. 

If only they would listen to his damned lectures. 

  
  


*

  
  


Dorothea was aware of how much she owed Manuela. If not for the former songstress, Dorothea might well have followed her mother into an early grave. Manuela had intervened not once, but twice: She'd discovered Dorothea's musical talent in Enbarr, and had spoken so highly of her magical abilities, she'd gotten an invitation to follow her to Garreg Mach. Dorothea would have moved heaven and earth to repay Manuela for her kindness, but her patience was beginning to wear thin. 

For all of her talents, Manuela was not a very good teacher. This wouldn't have been an issue, except that Dorothea was as shaky in Faith as her mentor was in pedagogy. Reason was a breeze, but her inability to map that onto the other subset of magic had the possibility of costing others their lives. 

Sooner or later, Edelgard was going to figure out that her Medic didn't know what she was doing. There was a slim chance of learning enough healing magic before a crisis struck, but that margin shrank with every day that Manuela came to class having drank too much the night before.

Case in point: this lecture. Manuela seemed to default to her favorite topic whenever she wanted to be in class the least—herself, with only nominal connections to their subject matter. Dorothea wouldn’t have begrudged it usually, but she couldn’t believe that _all_ men existed to test one’s Faith. Dorothea had met some of the worst examples of the breed in Enbarr’s gutters, but even her life experiences chafed at the idea that men were supposed to block them from the Goddess’s light. While Mercedes and Marianne weren’t disagreeing with the direction of the lecture, the other girls did seem perplexed. 

And then, someone giggled. Mercedes and Marianne were too well-heeled to giggle unprovoked in class, even when their instructor was shoveling cosmic blame onto the shoulders of every man who’d failed to sweep her off her feet, and Dorothea was grappling with her anxiety, so all heads turned toward the sound in surprise. The door was ajar, revealing just a stripe of telling green hair.

“Your Grace!” 

Saint Cethleann's seafoam ringlets were twisted up with silk ribbons and secured by an elaborate circlet. The braided gold vines were fitted with tiny blossoms, and even tinier stars. She jumped reflexively when called, some dangling adornment in her hair chiming sweetly.

“O-oh! Greetings, everyone! I was merely observing. I do not mean to intrude.”

“Nonsense. Come join us,” Manuela said, gesturing. “Truly, we would be honored to enjoy the vast benefit of your experience.” 

It would seem that not even the Saints were immune to Manuela’s weaponized cajoling. Her embarrassment at being caught peeking in the door was obvious, but it didn’t dim her loveliness as she meekly edged all the way into the classroom. 

Saint Cethleann was beautiful. In Dorothea's opinion, the statue of her in the cathedral didn't do her justice. In the flesh, she was ethereal. 

Logically, seeing proof of the Saints, a tangible link to the Goddess, should have strengthened Dorothea's Faith. The reality of Cethleann was inherently surreal, though. She bit her lip as she stood in front of the small class, endearingly—well, normal. Not human, but not what she expected from a being with a direct line to the cloud-lounging Progenitor of All. 

Did thinking that make Dorothea a heretic? She knew better than to air that observation, but if the Goddess could hear her thoughts, didn't She know? 

"What a treat for you three!" Manuela said, and promptly disappeared to address her hangover.

"I was not, ah, prepared to teach..." Saint Cethleann said, sounding faint. "I did not catch all of what Professor Manuela was sharing with you earlier. What was the subject of this lecture?"

“How men are the source of all misfortune,” Mercedes said. “Well. Most of it.” 

Marianne's sigh said that the nebulous rest was clearly all _her_ fault, which was classic Marianne. 

"Oh." Saint Cethleann giggled, her cheeks going pink. "I cannot say it would be appropriate for me to finish what she started, then. I am no master of _that_ subject. Is there, perhaps, something else you would like to know?" 

Marianne raised her hand. Dorothea swiveled in her seat, amazed. She'd never done that before. 

"Um...I was wondering, could you describe the Goddess's voice? Sometimes, I worry that I might be led astray since I wouldn't know better. If I'm ever so blessed as to hear Her voice, I want to be sure." Marianne's lower lip wobbled. "I hope that doesn't make my Faith sound weak, Your Grace. I believe with all my heart."

The tiny Saint hurried to Marianne's side. She took her hand, and the poor noble girl looked like she might swoon at the skin-on-skin contact. Seeming to recognize an overwhelmed boundary, Saint Cethleann squeezed her gently then stepped away.

“And that belief is itself strength! Please do not apologize. And please, please do not think your heart would not know the Goddess’s voice. Doubt is an unseeing monster in possession of the confidence of a prophet, and little else.”

"So," Dorothea, calling upon every last drip of experience in acting she had in her to force her voice into casual neutrality. She was going to sound offhand, not like she'd tortured herself over this question for weeks. This was an opportunity to ask someone that felt almost preordained, if she believed in that kind of thing. And she did. She needed to. "Is healing magic like a boon from the Goddess for belief in Her?"

Saint Cethleann's crown made her surprise musical. "Pardon me?" 

"Our Faith is a blessing?" Mercedes asked, even though it wasn't meant as a question. 

Saint Cethleann's forehead wrinkled delicately. She frowned.

"Oh, my. This is what you are taught?" 

"Are we not supposed to believe that Mercie's frankly miraculous abilities are not the Goddess playing favorites?" Dorothea said with a nervous laugh. "No offense, Mercie. You are an inspiration." 

"Tell me what you hold in your heart when you heal," the Saint said, smiling at Mercedes. 

"I pray the Goddess will shine Her brilliant light through me, so that my wounded friends can find the quickest route to healing," Mercedes said, clasping her hands over her chest. She blushed prettily and earnestly. 

"What a perfectly marvelous way to describe it!" Saint Cethleann said, warmly. "And you have Faith that you will be granted that illumination, don't you? That your comrades will be made whole?" 

"Of course!" 

"And so, it is. Faith is a sweet thing pursued. If you have the determination to reach out for it, you'll always find it within your grasp." 

"I don't—" Dorothea faltered. The exasperation had pushed the words out of her, like the sheer volume of her frustration had left absolutely no room for more. They were looking at her, so she had to finish. "I'm not sure I understand. It's hard to tell when I'm improving on something so—so hard to define." 

"By dint of your class, you will share in the suffering of your fellow man. They will come to you in their moment of greatest agony. You will see them at their most vulnerable, and to help you must open your heart to them,” Saint Cethleann said, and in her soft voice Dorothea could hear all of the bloodied hands she’d clasped. “Have Faith in their strength, their capacity to heal. Find what motivates you to look to tomorrow and hold it to your breast. That is the greatest advice I have for you." 

"That makes sense," Dorothea said, grateful to actually mean it. "Thank you."

“Do you think Professor Manuela plans to return?” Saint Cethleann asked after a moment, clearly not having much else to say. Her gaze wandered.

“Almost definitely not.” Not wanting to get her dearest mentor in hot water, despite it being the truth, Dorothea quickly added, “I don’t think she was feeling well.” 

“I see.” Saint Cethleann looked out the window thoughtfully. “Well, I see no reason why we should not end here, as it is one of our last sunny days before the weather turns. I will ask the Archbishop to speak with the farmers in the area around our monastery. If they have injured livestock, they can bring them here."

“Livestock, Your Grace?” Mercedes repeated, like she was hoping she hadn’t heard her correctly. 

“I have no doubt that you three could save your comrades should they fall to harm, but better that you not have to wonder if you will have the skill when that day comes. It would be foolish to injure anyone unnecessarily, but what is good for the goose is good for the paladin.”

“Oh, that is a lovely idea!” Marianne said, with more vibrancy and enthusiasm than Dorothea had heard from her to date. 

Saint Cethleann beamed. “I had hoped you’d agree. Faith is best practiced in community. It is sturdiest when built together, with many hands. None of us walk this world alone.”

Dorothea studied the Saint's lovely face. The gold flowers of her circlet were forget-me-nots, she realized. Though they weren't the biggest or flashiest blossom, they begged to be remembered. An interesting choice. 

The knot tied beneath Dorothea’s breastbone loosened, just a little. With any luck, her new favorite Saint would crash class again.

  
  


*

  
  


"What are you looking for?" 

The hardest part of feigning a lack of second language was holding his mother tongue when someone startled the urge to swear out of Claude. Linhardt's face appearing in his periphery was nearly enough to spook an Almyran curse about camel piss out of him. It would have been difficult to translate, even if he'd been inclined to do so. 

Claude slammed the book he'd been holding back into the shelf. "What're _you_ doing here?" 

The dimness of the library made the contrast between Linhardt's pale skin and dark hair and eyes all the starker. Illuminated only by the candle he carried, his face was downright ghostly. Claude lacked the Kingdom kids' preoccupation with the restless dead, but that didn't mean he loved the idea of specters following him around the monastery at night. He hadn't dug up any specific legends during his dives through the stacks, but the numbers bore out that any building in continual use for close to a thousand years had to have at least one unquiet spirit pacing its halls. 

"My question takes priority," Linhardt said. "I asked you first." 

He had him there. Claude shrugged. 

"Just browsing. Honest." 

Linhardt glanced at him sidelong through the drooping fringe of his long lashes. "I could point you in the right direction if you were indeed being honest. I spend much of my time here." 

"I've noticed. I meant what I said, though: I like looking around when I'm, shall we say, unsupervised?"

Linhardt hummed thoughtfully, then ignored him in favor of perusing the shelves. 

"I won't bother you, then." 

"Hey, you don't get to wiggle out of answering _my_ question,” Claude said. “I did ask you second." 

"Lysithea talks to herself when she reads. The head librarian is a busybody, and his assistant won't leave me alone. I like peace and quiet, when I can get it." 

And with that, Linhardt selected a book, took it to one of the study tables, and settled in to read. 

Claude could respect that. After some leisurely browsing, he found a hefty record of notable figures from Fódlan’s history he hadn’t read more than twice. He sat down at Linhardt's table, but left space between them. The proximity was an invitation, but he wouldn't demand attention. He'd said he favored peace and quiet, after all. 

It was companionable. Claude usually skulked back to his room with his stolen books, but this was a nice change of pace. Abruptly, Linhardt closed the ancient tome with a sigh. 

"I'm not bothering you, am I?" Claude asked, even though he'd been purposefully turning his pages as quietly as he could. 

"No. I am frustrated by the opacity of my subject matter, when the information should be readily available."

"I spend a lot of time here, too, y'know. Maybe I can play librarian for you," Claude said, winking. 

"Do you find it curious how little we actually know about the Saints?" Linhardt said, going from zero to soft heresy with blazing speed. "It bothers me that I never questioned that until their return. Before, they felt like...allegory, perhaps. But they are real people, about whose lives we know precious little."

"Heard you had a run-in with Saint Cethleann." Claude grinned. "What is she, your great-great-great-great grandmother or something?" 

"Therein lies my problem,” Linhardt said, offering further conversation instead of the dead-end of embarrassed teasing Claude had tried to corner him down. “She claims to have no children, and thus no way to establish her line. And yet, I bear her Crest." 

"And Ferdinand has Saint Cichol's, for that matter. Why do I feel like he'd mention having another kid or three?" 

"I had not considered that, but you're right." Linhardt shook his head. "I came here tonight hoping to find something I've missed, but I can only conclude that the lack of concrete information is by purposeful omission." 

"They're hiding something." 

"They have _hidden_ something. If I cannot know what it is, I want to know why." 

Linhardt's entire demeanor had changed. His posture tightened, his voice coming quick and clipped. The most interesting thing about the shift was that it hadn't been for Claude's benefit. The future minister wasn't even looking at him. He was staring past the bookshelves, into a middle distance where his thoughts held shape enough to tackle. 

"Huh. Determination is a good look on you. Would not have called that one." Deciding to take a risk, he added, "Hanneman and Constance won't help you look for any of that stuff. Believe me, I've tried. For whatever reason, the librarians don't even like hearing questions about their saintly figureheads. I've been looking into them myself." 

"Ah, yes," Linhardt said, absently. He went back to his reading, like he didn’t have the conversational equivalent to a Meteor spell itching the tip of his tongue. "The future King of Almyra would be interested in currying favor with the religious emissaries of other lands. How far does the Goddess's blessing carry, do you think?"

Claude laughed. He couldn't help it. What other response was there but to laugh, his tight throat straining with the effort?

He’d just said it so _casually._

"C'mon, now. It's not fair to hide a crafty brain like yours."

"Crafty? Hm." Linhardt closed the book he'd been flipping through, reaching for another. "I merely follow my curiosity—be it about the second coming of an ostensibly benevolent pair of saints, or the sudden appearance of a convenient heir apparent."

Claude wanted to laugh until it hurt. He'd been so sure he'd mapped out all of the threats among his fellow students, so certain he'd weighed the pros and cons so thoroughly he could not possibly be caught unawares, but he'd never crunched the numbers with Linhardt von Hevring in the mix. There was a lesson to be learned here, and he would likely be up for the rest of the night over the stress of it all. 

"How much is that information worth to you?" Claude asked, keeping a friendly smile stitched into place. "Because it'd mean a lot to me if you kept your discoveries to yourself."

"The only actors who'd counter-offer me would do so out of a desire to harm you or your people. I don't want that," Linhardt said, turning a page. The weirdest thing was, Claude was reasonably convinced that he meant it. All of his words could be rearranged into a shake-down, but he lacked motivation. He was a type of human Claude hasn't known existed, and he's been snoozing a couple desks over from him for weeks. 

"I appreciate that enough to make it worth your while, either way. Some people may call it bribery, but I say it's a token of our budding friendship."

"Unnecessary, I assure you," Linhardt said, but he smiled a little.

"I want to trust you. If we trust one another, we can pool our information. I get the feeling that a man like you appreciates what can be mutually gained through collaborative research."

"That sounds exhausting, to be perfectly frank. However, it does seem like our research goals are more or less aligned. I wouldn't mind sharing my notes. It will take you some time to get the hang of them, though."

"I can read just fine, thanks. You might've noticed." 

"My notes are coded,” Linhardt said, with the same simple deadpan he’d used when scattering Claude’s secrets like dangerous seeds. The lack of inflection made his words sit, inert and stubborn in their opacity. “I'll share the polyalphabetic substitution cipher with you, but I doubt you'll pick it up immediately." 

Claude's surprise was chased swiftly by delight. Almyrans had invented substitution ciphers, but he got the feeling that Linhardt knew that already. 

"A man after my own heart! Knowledge is property worth protecting. Not a lot of people in Fódlan seem to get that."

"Oh, I think they've learned that particular trick better than you'd believe.” Linhardt shut that book, then got himself several more. “You haven't found the culled library, I assume."

Claude's mouth briefly fell open, then pulled into a wide—genuine, and therefore rare—grin. "After the curfew shift change tonight, you're going to take me on a full tour."

"Mm. Day after tomorrow. It's been three days since I last slept, and I won't be any use to you if I'm not well-rested," Linhardt said, punctuating the thought with a yawn.

"It's been _what_ now? I thought you were Mister Naps." Claude might have identified Linhardt as a threat last moon if he had seen him in class more than a handful of times, and if he’d been awake for more than a few moments when he did show up. The total of his classroom participation was snores too soft for Saint Cichol to pick up over the stream of noble quarreling. 

"If given my choice, I would spend three days awake and the following two asleep. I probably wouldn't nap as frequently if I could stick to the schedule my body prefers. Alas, I'm expected to go to lectures." 

"Alas indeed." Claude gave the other boy a long look. He might as well have never seen him before, with all the surprises he'd learned in the quiet dark of the post-midnight library. "You're a strange one, Lin." 

"We're not normal, we Crest-bearers," he said, shrugging. "Why pretend otherwise?" 

And again, Linhardt had him there. Most nobles thought themselves the betters of common folk, but Claude didn't sense any of the usual arrogance tied up in his plain assessment of Crested people. It was oddly refreshing, especially coming from a scion of the Empire. He rifled through his mental register of the Empire's structure, unsure of his recall because he couldn't believe he'd hear such a naked lack of ego come out of a guy positioned to inherit the Ministry of the Interior. 

"Day after tomorrow, then," Claude said, in an _and-I'm-holding-you-to-it_ tone of voice. "In the meantime, I hope you have pleasant dreams. I'll cover for you, if Saint Cichol asks why you aren't in class." 

"I'd appreciate that." Linhardt loaded up his bag with several books, the stitches audibly snapping in protest, and hefted it onto his thin shoulder. He yawned, long and unashamedly wide. "Goodnight, Your Highness." 

As frequently as Claude bandied the somewhat-honorific title at Dimitri and Edelgard, he'd never had it batted back at him. He'd never been addressed like that before, not in their language. The Almyran equivalent had only been used as a pejorative, away from his parents' ears. It surprised Claude how much he didn't hate hearing Linhardt use it. 

"You'd better keep that talk to yourself, buddy!" Claude called after him. "Or I'll wake you up every hour, on the hour!" 

Already melting back into the shadows past the stacks, Linhardt laughed. "More annoying men than you have tried." 

  
  


*

  
  


Dimitri's wound had long since healed, but the ache lingered. It did not surprise him that the bandit's axe haunted him; in Dimitri's experience, the world was as populated by ghosts as the living. His scars stretched back further than his childhood memories, so he was old hat at settling into new pains. It did not occur to Dimitri to complain. He factored more time into his routine for getting from place to place and idly wondered when this ache would leave him—or if the ghost gnawing at his hip would follow him into his eventual grave. 

"I wish I could escort you to your room, but I must stay until all of the evening's dishes have been washed," Dedue said, sounding extremely unhappy about it. 

Dimitri muscled down the urge to apologize for assigning the chore to Dedue. As house leader, delegation was his task alone. He'd appointed him to cooking duty on purpose, though, because his retainer so enjoyed spending time in the kitchen. Dimitri just hated to see Dedue frustrated, and wanted to apologize for upsetting him. He had lingered in the dining hall long after everyone else had filtered out, hoping to give Dedue time to finish up, but it was officially past curfew. He couldn't be caught wandering—as house leader, it would be unbecoming. Dimitri intended to lead by example as king, and that began here. 

"You need not worry. It is not far," Dimitri assured him. 

"Yes, Your Highness," Dedue said, but he knew him well enough to recognize that his friend was acknowledging the truth of the statement, not agreeing with him. 

"Good night, Dedue," he said, smiling. 

"And to you as well, Your Highness." His retainer bowed, returning to the kitchen.

Dimitri carefully picked his way down the narrow stone steps. The path to the courtyard wasn't difficult, but he'd learned not to push his bad hip because the approach to his second floor dorm room became painful if he didn't pace himself. His new wounds, the sultry weather of southern Fódlan, and the many unexpected obstacles that came of life in the monastery conspired with Dimitri's old ghosts to keep him awake, most nights. 

Dimitri couldn’t be sure, later, what conjured the vision. Perhaps it was his exhaustion, or punishment for the simple pleasure of savoring a balmy evening, or maybe it was real, but a horror emerged from the clotted shadows behind the greenhouse. The silhouette was jagged as a toothache, large as legend. Dimitri’s pulse quickened.

"Who are you?” He called. “What is your business here?" 

The figure turned toward him, slow and sinister as a warship changing course. "I am the future. How will you greet me?" 

"I said, what business do you have?" 

"I came to discuss your path," the masked shadow said, stepping closer. 

Surely, someone else would come. They would see this nightmare. Dimitri wished Dedue would rush through his work and appear to lend him aid, but he knew Dedue better than that. Dimitri cursed his hardworking nature. He could not be upset; even Dedue had to leave him alone with his ghosts. 

"You and every other damned shade." Dimitri rested his hand meaningfully on the hilt of his dagger. "Must I see if you bleed?" 

The apparition made a sound too inhuman for him to decipher. It was a low note of resonance, blunt force displeasure. "So you are eager for violence, then." 

"I seek to defend myself without hesitation. My peoples' future depends upon it." 

"Yet you'd fall eagerly on a bandit's blade."

El had thanked him, of course. He had likely saved her life. However, their single conversation following his release from Manuela’s care had been stilted. Polite. He’d waited for her to say something, anything, more than what was demanded of the moment’s propriety, but she’d given him nothing. 

"To protect an ally."

"The Empire is no ally of yours."

Dimitri flinched, despite himself. The masked specter’s confidence was gutting. The problem was, his memories of El were tender as bruises. When he thought about his life before the Goddess had turned her benevolent gaze away from the Kingdom, he remembered the sensation of her hand gripping his, teaching him to lead with gentleness. It’d been a personal triumph, learning to dance. The onset of puberty had set Dimitri’s Crest aflame; outside of his parents and retainers, most feared his monstrous strength. 

But El had trusted him. She’d seen him lift an injured horse that summer, but she’d still treated his hesitance as a bother. It’d meant more to him than he could have told her then. He’d tried, with the dagger, but he doubted she’d understood. It hadn’t mattered, in the end. 

"Lady Edelgard is a loyal friend," Dimitri said, his tone a firm warning. "One day soon, she will take her throne. I believe that together, we can forge a lasting peace." 

"You're a fool," the masked figure said, their disgust as palpable and thick as a blanket of mold. 

“If I do not believe in a better future, I eliminate it as a possibility. For Fódlan, I must seek hope.” Guilt pushed the rest of the words out of him. “Even as I must also pursue justice.” 

“Conflict is the only inevitability in our future.” 

“Not necessarily—” 

“To deny this demonstrates how little you understand. Your kingdom is another poor harvest removed from collapse. The Empire sags in her foundation, her nobility rotten with corruption. And the Alliance—legitimate heir or not, Claude von Riegan is incapable of leading them. The other Houses will not follow a foreigner. Fódlan will splinter. We will see war,” the spirit said, and disappeared. 

Dimitri pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, reeling with vertigo. He was not sleeping well, the pain in his hip being what it was. Insomnia inflamed the mind. Like a lightning-struck tree, he burned from the inside out. 

He regretted having not thrown his dagger. If he'd drawn blood, he could have banished the possibility of a future whose spirit spoke with a voice like a plague of locusts. 

  
  


*

  
  


It was a sloppy plan, and Hubert could not abide by that. Above all, he believed in precision. He cared deeply about his work—Lady Edelgard's goals were all the motivation he needed for this lifetime, and possibly the next. Her bright-blazing future was his lodestar, guiding him at all times. He left little to chance, cultivating intelligence like a field of perfect bloody flowers, but he more than anyone understood that years of carefully knit circumstances could be unraveled through the clumsiness of a single hasty action. In his mind, there were precious few things worth jeopardizing the intricate net they’d cast to ensnare Lady Edelgard’s world to come, and the librarian’s assistant was simply not among the risks he was willing to take.

But the Agarthans demanded it of Lady Edelgard, and thus she asked it of him. Despite the fact that Hubert was out of the noxious chemicals necessary to subdue Constance von Nuvelle, their erstwhile allies wanted her delivered. He could not source what he needed outside of the monastery, not at this hour, so Hubert had to resort to petty thievery. It was demeaning for a man of his capabilities. 

At times, it seemed as though the Agarthans did not wish to see Lady Edelgard succeed. Hubert could neither ignore the evidence that snowballed into this theory, nor could he make sense of what any of them would hope to gain through the Crown Princess’s failure. They’d invested years into her development, inestimable resources—that they would risk all that for the immediate apprehension of the librarian’s assistant worried Hubert. The Agarthans shared little with him—not their timeline much less their ultimate goals—but their tangible support was still substantial enough that they overlooked their gross mistreatment of his lady, past and present. It disgusted Hubert, but he trusted Lady Edelgard’s wisdom in the matter. Her suffering at their hands had been greater than he would ever know, so he deferred to her. In this, her word was absolute. 

Fortunately, Hubert knew that the infirmary would be empty. Doomed romantic and habitual drinker that she was, Manuela was guaranteed to be at her favorite bar at this time of night. Every evening, she invited the universe to furnish her with a handsome stranger, and fell back on the companionship of grain alcohol when her dreams failed to materialize before midnight. This close to the Saints’ personal quarters, Hubert was grateful for Manuela’s predictability. She would be prowling the town of the principal actor in her happily ever after, so Hubert was free to rifle through the infirmary’s supplies without detection of interruption. 

Or so he thought. 

"What are you skulking for, you...skulker?" Ferdinand demanded blearily from the infirmary bed. He sat up, pawing at his rumpled hair. He was such a perfect picture of inelegance as to be almost entirely unrecognizable.

Hubert was briefly taken aback, puzzled. He would have been informed had Ferdinand been injured during their post-classroom training period. The redhead had clearly been sleeping in the infirmary for an hour or more, and the idea that there was something off about his bearing nibbled with fierce tiny teeth at the edges of Hubert’s awareness. Ferdinand’s voice was as boisterous as ever, but his diction was wrong. He was taking too much care with the shape of his words, like each one had to be placed firmly between his lips and tongue. The answer was as much of a surprise as Ferdinand’s presence in the dark room. A so-called _lesser noble_ would have slurred his speech. Hubert might not have believed the evidence before him if he hadn’t been rushing. Between an inopportune slant of shadow and his own carelessness, he’d gotten terribly close to Ferdinand before he’d noticed him—close enough to pick up the sweet-sour warmth of liquor on his breath. 

"If I did not know better, I would say that you have been drinking." 

"Well! Shows what you know indeed! I _have_ been drinking!" Ferdinand said, far too loudly. 

"Why?" Hubert asked, too shocked to edge politely around the question. 

"Manuela prescribed me tea and a tipple," Ferdinand informed him, as loftily as possible for someone working inordinately hard not to stumble over his drink-thickened tongue. 

"And again, I must ask you _why_." 

"To ameliorate my—my great—” Ferdinand’s shoulders bunched, a curiously chelonian motion. “My _gratuitous failure._ "

Hubert had never heard Ferdinand use the word _failure_ before. Not in reference to himself or his actions, even when it would have been more than appropriate to address it as such. Ferdinand von Aegir had what the maudlin types labeled a sunny disposition. He was annoyingly bright, as though energy alone could be fashioned into armor if he poured his overabundance of Faith into the undertaking, and had been this way for as long as Hubert could remember. From their first introduction as children, Ferdinand had distinguished himself in willful optimism above all else. 

With grim determination, Hubert assessed his options. The risks increased dramatically if he chanced a magical means of subduing the librarian's assistant. The former noble was an eccentric, so he could not guarantee that she didn't test her spells out on herself. If she'd altered herself overmuch, any further magical manipulation could backfire. Their ally had been clear in their orders: Constance von Nuvelle had to be delivered alive. Hubert needed to steal from the nurse's cabinet, and Ferdinand was just sober enough to ask bothersome questions if he didn't handle this discreetly. 

"Would you care to..." Hubert nearly gagged on the word. " _Share_?"

Ferdinand’s glare held heat, and hurt. “Why, so that you may laugh?”

“So that I might offer you counsel. I would never have earned Lady Edelgard’s trust if I lacked that natural talent.” 

Ferdinand could have pointed out that, much like his own position, Hubert’s role as steward was an inherited one, but Ferdinand’s distrust lost bloodily to his desire to talk about himself. Hubert had expected just that. He would have parried Ferdinand’s attack with the fact that despite being a hereditary title, the current Marquis von Vestra had failed in his duty to Emperor Ionius. Lady Edelgard did not have to trust Hubert—she had every reason not to, given that both House Aegir and House Vestra had clawed the mantle from her father’s back. Her esteem was a gift, and he worked diligently to be worthy of such forgiveness. This was not something Hubert talked about candidly, not even with Lady Edelgard herself, so he was glad he didn’t need to say anything he’d have to hope Ferdinand would forget. 

“I suppose. If you insist,” Ferdinand said, though Hubert had done no such thing. He scrubbed at his eyes. “You will recall that Saint Cichol asked me to stay after class.” 

“Yes,” Hubert said, holding back the urge to offer any of the less-than-flattering theories he’d compiled on the subject. 

“Because of Bernadetta, you see. I do not know if he knew of my family’s intent to ally with hers at one time, or if he recognized me as the natural choice due to my personality, but he—Saint Cichol, that is—he asked that I talk with Bernadetta. That I convince her to attend lectures.” 

Hubert waited for more, but Ferdinand was not immediately forthcoming. He hunched over, like he hadn’t been drilled in posture from the time his toddler neck had strength enough to pivot his cumbersome ginger head. 

“And I tried,” he mumbled, his words gone shapeless with shame. “I spoke with her. When I finally succeeded in getting her to open her door, I tried to—to take her outside, because fresh air—that is where we must start, no? With fresh air? It brings vigor to the senses, and—” 

“But,” Hubert interrupted, before Ferdinand could fall into rambling about the many virtues of the great outdoors. “She refused, I take it.”

“I overreached. For her. She sprained my wrist. I was foolish. Boorish, even.” 

Hubert could fill in the blanks. Despite her size, Bernadetta was difficult to pin down. Rumor had it that she’d been thrown into a gunny sack and physically brought to Garreg Mach by her parents. Hubert had written off the gossip as colorful embroidery, but if she had sufficient practice with escape artistry, perhaps Count Varley had indeed resorted to bagging up his unruly daughter. Ferdinand would not have taken the sprain as lightly as such an injury deserved, the pain magnified by his wounded pride. Manuela had chosen the soporific effects of doctored tea to quiet his too-large, too-loud emotions. It all made enough sense. 

"How am I going to tell Saint Cichol that I failed? He asked me! _Me!_ This is worse than disappointing Father. I expect _him_ to be disappointed with me, but Saint Cichol—he will regret having asked me." Ferdinand hiccupped miserably. "You could not possibly understand. I should not expect it." 

"Please. Do not doubt the limits of my imagination," Hubert said, dryly. "For a thousand years, your lineage has enjoyed the largess of his Crest, yet you are the first to meet him." 

Ferdinand wilted, face in his hands. "Oh, only _I_ would be such a fool as to believe that mine would be a private shame." 

In Hubert's mind, this was many times more troublesome than being discovered by a teacher or knight. He sighed. 

"And how, precisely, have you earned Saint Cichol's possible disdain?" 

"He asked...wait, I have already told you that part." Ferdinand itched at his chin—or tried to. He missed by a margin, scratching at air before dropping his limp hand back into his lap. "Or did I not think it loudly enough?" 

"You explained the events, but not what is preventing you from trying again.” Since he did not have time to waste leading Ferdinand toward his point like a silly gelded steed to water, Hubert fixed him with a stern look. Let him know that he meant this, at least. “To give up is _not_ in your nature."

Ferdinand exhaled slowly. He found his spine, and with it, his posture. 

"One of…” He licked his lips, his voice regaining its strength. “One of my better traits, wouldn't you say?" 

"I would," Hubert said, but didn't. 

Ferdinand smiled, goofy and foolish in his relieved conscience. It took so little to please him. Hubert would have been fascinated or jealous if he had not been annoyed by that trait. He didn’t have time to chew on that internally, though, because Ferdinand seemed to finally realize that _he_ didn’t have a sprain-and-alcohol-related reason to be in the infirmary. He’d rather hoped he wouldn’t come that close to a realization, but Ferdinand had a habit of frustrating his expectations. 

"What are you doing in here at this time of night, anyway? I would not have agreed to sleep here if Manuela had not promised I would be left undisturbed." 

"A knight was injured on patrol," Hubert said, having had ample time to mentally construct the lie and test it for soundness. "Not seriously, _thank the Goddess,_ but I volunteered to bring him salve."

Ferdinand rarely picked up on sarcasm even when he was sober, so the impious little barb at the Church’s object of worship entirely missed the ear of the Prime Minister’s only legitimate heir. 

"So helpful! One of your better traits. Edelgard is lucky to have such a loyal steward ever by her side." Ferdinand ran his fingers through his sleep-flattened hair, which released the volume instead of taming it appropriately. " _Lady_ Edelgard. My apologies. My tongue is—it is slippery." 

Hubert chose not to dwell on the quick, sincere correction, nor the compliment. A slippery tongue indeed. 

"I shall leave you to your rest, then," Hubert said with a perfunctory bow. 

"And planning," Ferdinand murmured, already sounding mostly asleep. "Such plans." 

Hubert pocketed the bottle of anesthetic and _pulled_ with his magic, tearing a narrow red path in the air that would lead him to his Emperor. He was grateful for the task ahead, as he found himself needing distance from Ferdinand's soft sigh of relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hilda, Caspar, Rodrigue, and Felix are all trans. I say nobles (especially Crested ones) have more freedom of gender expression because holding on to genetic lines of inheritance is baked into the worldbuild and I'm the boss here. idk where to put that fact because it's not a "plot point". Just thought u should kno. Have a good day, friend!


End file.
